Удушье (Choke)

Hold your finger over the open phone book.

Step right up and become a hero, ladies and gentlemen. Step right up and save a life.

Just let your hand drop, and let fate decide for you.

Chapter 13

Because of the heat

, Denny strips off his coat, then his sweater. Without undoing the buttons, even the cuffs or the collar one, he pulls his shirt off over his head, inside out, so now his head and hands are bagged in red plaid flannel. The T-shirt underneath works up around his armpits while he's fighting the shirt off his head, and his bare stomach looks rashy and caved-in. Some long twisted hairs sprout around his little dot nipples. His nipples look cracked and sore.

'Dude,' Denny says, still struggling inside his shirt. 'Too many layers. Why's it got to be so hot in here?'

Because it's a kind of a hospital. It's a constant care residence.

Over his jeans and belt, you can see the dead elastic waist­band of his bad underpants. Orange rust stains show on the loose elastic. In front, a few coiled hairs poke out. There's yellowy sweat stains on, for real, his underarm skin.

The front desk girl is sitting right here, watching with her face all bunched up tight around her nose.

I try and tug his T-shirt back down, and there's for sure many colors of lint in his navel. At work in the locker room, I've seen Denny pull his pants off inside out with the underpants still on them the way I did when I was little.

And still with his head wrapped up in his shirt, Denny goes, 'Dude, can you help me? There's a button somewheres I don't know about.'

The front desk girl is giving me her look. She's got the tele­phone receiver halfway to her ear.

With most of his clothes on the floor next to him, Denny gets skinnier until he's down to just his sour T-shirt and his jeans with dirt on each knee. His tennis shoes are double-knotted with the knots and eye holes glued forever with dirt.

It's somewhere around a hundred degrees here because most of these people don't have any circulation, I tell him. It's a lot of old folks here.

It smells clean, which means you only smell chemicals, clean­ing stuff, or perfumes. You have to know the pine smell is cover­ing up shit somewhere. Lemon means somebody vomited. Roses are urine. After an afternoon at St. Anthony's, you never want to smell another rose the rest of your life.

The lobby has stuffed furniture and fake plants and flowers.

This decorator stuff will peter out after you get beyond the locked doors.

To the front desk girl, Denny says, 'Will anybody mess with my junk if I just leave it here?' He means the pile of his old clothes. He says, 'I'm Victor Mancini.' He looks at me. 'And I'm here to see my mom?'

To Denny, I go, 'Dude, jeez, she doesn't have brain damage.' To the desk girl, I say, 'I'm Victor Mancini. I'm here all the time to see my mom, Ida Mancini. She's in Room 158.'

The girl presses a phone button and says, 'Paging Nurse Remington. Nurse Remington to the front desk, please.' Her voice comes out huge through the ceiling.

You have to wonder if Nurse Remington is a real person.

You have to wonder if maybe this girl thinks Denny's just another aggressive chronic undresser.

Denny goes to kick his clothes under a stuffed chair.